It's time to go a'loggin'!

After the leaves of summer drop from the hardwood forests, the dark green racks of the pine tops stand out against scudding autumn clouds and nightly frosts warn of comming snows. In the old days these portents told the loggers of the vast virgin pine forests that once covered most of our north country that it was "time to go a'loggin'." Like the racehorse at the starting gate, they were rarin' to go!

But it was far from that simple for the commercial loggers who cut our timber. They did not march their men into the woods with axes over their shoulders and start chopping. The planning and organization that was done before the logging commenced was comparable to that of an army moving into battle and much of it had been done months -- even years -- before this time. The staff of the big companies marshalled their forces like an army: the shock troops were those who went in and prepared the work area with roads and camps, the main brigade those who cut and hauled out the timber, and the supply division which toted into the work area what was needed to care for the men, beasts and equipment.

The logging company made their plas from the reports of the landlookers and cruisers whose job was to estimate the kind and amount of timber on land owned or controlled by them, or which they might buy or contract to cut. Also they studied and reported on the feasibility of getting the timber out to a landing.

The planners in the front office had many "rules of thumb" to go by. For instance, for each hundred thousand board feet of standing timber, they had to provide a man for the season to get it out -- this roughly gave them the size of the crew they would need. Since the practical walking distance from the camp to the cutting area was usually limited to about a mile, the estimated yield in a tract around the camp determined the number of men to hire for each one. In this 2500-acre a yield of ten million feet could reasonably be expected, thus about one hundred men would be the camp size. In some blocks of timber the yield might be much more -- perhaps doubled -- then the crew would be larger or the logging would be done in two or more seasons - a more economical way to do it by using the same set of buildings again.

The loggers did not wait for winter to start. Their operations began when the cutting and hauling was done. A lot of work had to be done in preparation before they could fill up the crew for the cutting. A "tote road" to the campsite had to be located, cleared and graded form an existing road leading to the source of supplies so that building materials could be brought in and the job supplied with its needs. This was usually only an improved trail, cut out as wide as the wagon and sleighs needed, and a minimum amount of grading was done however, the roadbed had to be firm soil or fill since they were for summer use only. Moderate grades could be tolerated and they usually followed high ground.

The logging roads over which the great sleighloads were hauled to a landing on the river or railroad line were usually constructed in the late fall after part of the camp was built so that the large crew and the teams needed to cut out and grade them could be housed. These roadways had to be wider to accommodate bunks of up to sixteen feet in width and runners spaced seven to nine feet apart under the sleigh. The uphill gradient could not be too steep or even a four-horse team could not pull the heavy load, nor could it be too sharp on the downhill side because the sleigh might over-run and "jam" the team.

Since the hauling roads in most pine operations were for winter use only, they were often routed across swamps and lakes, thus lowering the cost of the roadbuildingjob. The roadway was cut out in the fall and the grade laid before freeze-up. The last part of the job to be done was to use a rutter to set the path for the sleigh runners to follow--a sort of up-side-down railroad track which was iced to make sledding easy by filling the ruts with water from an enormous water tank on a sled after the freeze-up. The ruts were cut by pulling a dray which had adjustible blades projecteing downward to gouge out the furrows in the roadbed at the desired width.

After cold weather came, the roads were always kept clear of snow with a V-type log snowplow to allow the soil to freeze deeply, making a surface as solid as concrete. Across soft areas where a team would bog down and not be able to pull equipment, men "tramped in" the snow until it froze deep enough to support the team and plow. When this method did not suffice, corduroy (poles or cull logs laid crosswise of the road and lightly covered with earth or snow) was used to get a firmer roadbed.

Some of the hauling roads were many miles long with branches winding far back into the timberlands (the angle and curve at the junction of these branches show the researcher which way the logs were hauled) and their grades were by necessity well laid out. Some were later developed into town roads. The engineers and road crews of the CCC took over many of them to re-grade as forest roads, often with only the need our routing around swamps and lakes which the old roadbuilders had used as shortcuts. The network in the Seeley Forest was all done this way by Camp Smith Lake in the thirties. Another good example of a hauling road can be found just south of Hwy. 77 at the top of O'Brien's Hill -- the sleigh ruts can still be seen.

The typical logging camp of the old days was planned for a complement of one hundred men in a block of timber where they would cut ten million feet -- about forty-five thousand logs. The buildings were laid up from treelength pine logs of sixty to eighty feet. The log in each tier was reversed lengthwise from the one below it to get an even height with five or six logs. The spaces between the logs were blocked with split shakes and chinked with moss or mud and straw-plaster. Doors and windows were all in the ends except a skylight window for ventilation. The roof was usually framed with spruce poles for rafters, rough boards for sheathing and shakes or tarpaper to run off the water. The floor was of rough lumber laid on poles, and the cracks between the boards made the job of the bullcook who did the sweeping much lighter -- any small items just sifted through. To keep the wind from blowing up between the boards, dirt was banked up around the outside of the building and these lines of earth and the cellar hole by the cookshack are what we find today to mark the site of old camps. Usually there was no foundation under the walls -- the bottom log was laid on the ground;it was then called a "mud-sill". Some builders set the bottom log up on large stones or log butts.

The "Logging Camp" at Historyland in Hayward is typical of the small, better-quality camp of the old logging days. Its builders paterned their design from pictures taken of the old camps when they were in use and it combines the cook shanty and the bunkhouse with a "dingle" between them.

The cook shanty, bunkhouse and barns were all built the same way, either placed parallel to each other, or two might be placed end-to-end with a covered dingle several feet wide between them. At the cook shanty the dingle was used for cold storage of meat, at the bunkhouse as a "wash up" for the men, and at the bars it provided a sheltered entryway and a covered space for feed bins and hay. A smaller building provided quarters for the camp foreman, the scaler and the clerk and his "wanigan", a stock of candy, tobacco, and clothing sold to the men. An extra bunk was provided here for the "walking boss" or checker when they made camp. A blacksmith shop, often with windows in the roof were usual. Behind each building was a one-to six-holer for the convenience of the men.

The company planning a logging operation was far from done when the camp was built and the roads were ready for winter. After the cook, the first men to be hired were a blacksmith and his coworker, the woodbutcher. They had to be in the camp early so that they could get the hundreds of pieces of equipment needed on the job ready for use. Unless the logger had it from previous jobs, it was built in the shops from scrap-iron and carefully selected wood from the nearby forest.

Our hundred-man camp had a fairly constant makeup of jobs, although the variables of terrain, timber stand and length of the haul changed some of them. The needs for equipment could be figured by rule of thumb again: ten three man saw crews would cut about ninety-thousand feet per day. This required five skidding teams to bring the logs to the crosshaul at the loading area. The five-man "jammer" crew could load thirty thousand feet per day, thus requiring three jammers. This made up fifteen sleighloads but this number of sleighs could be reduced if the turn-around time to the landing was less than a full day. A go-devil had to be fashioned from a "crotchtree" from the swamp for each skidding team. All teams had to have single and double eveners, or if it was an ox camp, a yoke for each team. One or two water tanks had to be made for iceing the roads; handles for cant hooks and axes and endless fidhooks, bitch-links and monkey-links made for the many chains used. And so the list of equipment could be made beforehand, and when it was completed we could start the winter's main job -- get out the logs!

Reprinted with permission of the Eldon Marple estate. Photos courtesy of the Sawyer County Historical Society.